Machinery of Dissent : People and Technology in Political Protests in Autocracies

Technology is no longer a passive tool to be picked up and set aside; it has become an integral part of the political fabric of contemporary societies. It does not merely solve problems – it co-creates them, shapes them, and frames them. This doctoral thesis investigates the role of technology as a counterpart to protesters within authoritarian regimes, focusing on its active integration into political dissent. By examining two empirical cases – the incorporation of Telegram and TikTok into the Belarusian protests of summer 2020 and the Russian protests in January 2021 – the thesis explores how digital platforms are drawn into protests through socio-technical networks co-mediated by humans and technology. The empirical material includes a dataset of protest-related content on TikTok and Telegram, as well as 38 interviews with protest participants, protest leaders, and digital activists. Building on this material, the thesis first proposes an updated framework for analysing the mobilisation and coordination of technology-mediated political protests. It further explores protest-related agencies of people and technology and conceptualises protest organisation as labour, often unseen and perceived as performed solely by technologies. Finally, by engaging with social movement theories and science and technology studies, the thesis offers the concept of digital town squares and argues that recognising digital spaces as legitimate sites of political struggle enables a deeper understanding of how movements are organised and sustained.  The metaphor of the ‘machinery of dissent’ illustrates a network in which protesters, coordinators, technologies, and infrastructures function as interconnected cogs and gears. Within this machinery, technology operates not as an external facilitator, but as a constitutive force – a gearwheel that shapes the rhythm and direction of dissent itself.